The elbow and the sock

Today I had a weird elbow twinge pain. Which for me is unusual. Shoulders, knees, even wrists I could understand. But elbow?

I know it was not from the gym – I did all lower body stuff this morning and somewhere deep within my glute muscles some bundle of fibers are bleating out “we don’t like you anymore!” It wasn’t until a couple of hours into my workday that the pain twinges began. I felt fine this morning when I got up and to the gym, and I felt fine through the other trauma-drama of my morning. Around lunch time that I noticed straightening it out completely made this little twinge of pain, but only sometimes. After chatting with my friends about it at lunch as one of this current events of our days, we decided it was stress elbow, because nothing else came to mind.

So after lunch one of the associates comes in with a white crew sock. I eyed is suspiciously and backed away, just in case it was stinky, which earned me an eye roll and assurances it was clean. He says I continually bump my elbow on the arm of my chair, and he sock was to protect it. Thinking about it, I figured okay, agreed that I do periodically have that behavior, and accepted the sock.

Now, this seems perfectly logical to me, but living with M and his many, many cuts and scrapes and injuries from running or working around the house, I thought the intention was that I cut the sock part off the sock and use the stretchy part to protect my elbow. Not very stylish – walking around with half a tube sock on your elbow – but at the time it seemed fine.

The associate who gave me the sock was out at anther firm this afternoon, but one of the other associates saw it on my elbow and did a double take. He then informed me that the intention was that I put the intact sock over the arm of my chair to cushion the impact of my grazing elbow. I was really embarrassed and hyper-responsible me immediately thought I should text an apology and then run out and buy him another pair of socks. But work happens, and all afternoon the guys were cruising by my office to examine my elbow sleeve and tell me about how meaningful the hacked up socks. They are – were – his favorite basketball socks. They were his lucky basketball socks. Those socks didn’t get washed for a year after he won some team won the basketball championship in college. They were his only pair of gym socks. He would be laughed out of the gym for wearing black dress socks going forward. Forget getting married and fathering children; he’d never get another date, having his prized athletic socks hacked to bits.

They were relentless. It reminds me how much I will miss the camaraderie and the teasing, and how special this firm has been for me. Surprisingly, the normality of our days thus far this week – even though I am typically not in the office on Tuesdays – has made it easier knowing these are the last of our days together. Work is getting done, fires being extinguished, everything is running smoothly. For them, next week will mean new faces in various offices and new procedures in how things are managed. I suspect the real transition will begin Monday morning.

Until then, this is my office, this is my crew. They can joke around and tease and try to make me feel ashamed of hacking up a coworkers loaned socks. I did run out and buy replacement pair after work, and they are waiting on his desk. And the legend of me and my elbow sleeve will live in infamy.

It is as it should be. I don’t do that much truly dumb stuff all that often.

And my elbow? It feels better. Maybe it’s purely psychosomatic, or maybe the sock sleeve did something beneficial. Or maybe it’s all the laughter of the afternoon. I am now sure it’s the result of all the mousing this week – editing a lot of invoices and writing a lot of emails. Yet another silver lining of using my MacBook more during the workday.

5 thoughts on “The elbow and the sock”

I laughed out loud reading this. Not at you, but a happy laugh that your coworker would be so thoughtful to help you with your elbow and at the good natured ribbing of your other coworkers. There’s good people to be found in the world. I see why you’re sad this it’s all changing.